The invention refers to a device for injecting a treating liquid, particularly brine, into a material to be treated, particularly into meat, comprising at least two sets of injection needles, which needles are supported against the action of springs in a needle case being arranged in a common frame for upward and downward reciprocating movement.
Such devices are known (Austrian Pat. No. 342,402). As a rule, the needles of each needle set are arranged in two rows and eject the treating liquid only with those needles which have entered the meat. This is achieved by means of strippers carried along with the needle cases and contacting the material to be treated on downward movement of the needles, so that the movement of the strippers will be stopped when they contact the meat to be treated, whereas the needles are further moved in downward direction so that they can penetrate into the material to be treated. The resulting relative movement between the needle case and the stripper is used to open a valve interconnected into the supply conduit of the treating liquid and to again close this valve as soon as the needles are extracted from the material to be treated. As soon as the needles are retracted from the meat, the needle case and, respectively, its frame serving for feeding the treating liquid lift the stripper off the material to be treated by means of an abutment.
It has shown in practice that the supply of treating liquid, particularly brine, is subjected to restrictions with respect to time and movements, so that more than a certain amount of treating liquid cannot be injected into the material to be treated with one single needle set within a predetermined unit of time. In a device of the kind described above, this drawback is avoided by arranging two sets of needles in mutually inclined V-arrangement. The meat, being moved step by step through the device on a conveyer belt, is first pickled by the needles of the first needle case, then is further conveyed in forward direction and subsequently is, after a certain distance, again pickled by the needles of the second needle case. By pickling twice the meat there results the essential advantage that per unit of time a greater volume of brine can be injected into the meat, so that for achieving approximately the same level of pickling the meat can be moved through the pickling machine at a greater speed. Thus, the output per hour of pickled meat can be substantially increased. The oblique or V-shaped arrangement of the needle cases and therefor also of the pickling needles provides, in comparison with a vertical arrangement of the pickling needles, the advantage that the needles of the first needle case penetrate into the meat from one side in an inclined direction, whereas the needles of the second needle case penetrate into the meat from the other side, preferably in a mirror-image relative to the needles of the first needle case, i.e. with the same angle of inclination relative to the horizontal supporting surface for the meat formed by the conveyor belt. Thus, the needles of the second needle case are reliably prevented from penetrating into the meat at the same location as have penetrated the needles of the first needle case. Furthermore, the penetration path into the meat as a rule is substantially longer for an obliquely moved needle than for a needle moved in vertical direction, so that the pickling needle has a longer residence time within the meat which enables to inject a greater amount of brine into the meat than with a vertical arrangement of the needles. By arranging both needle sets according to a V-shaped arrangement, the component of force exerted by one of both needle sets on the meat and, respectively, the device in horizontal direction is compensated by the component of force exerted by the other needle set. In practice it has further shown that when the needles of both needle cases are introduced according to a V-shaped pattern, the meat is subjected to a tenderizing action and the quality of the pickled meat is thus substantially improved.